Under Certain Conditions
by ChronicallyinFlaming
Summary: Sequel to Real Life. The fourth wall further crumbles as the characters get together to discuss all the oddities that Shepard possesses while being controlled by the player.


**The Prompt: Multifill: Shepard's Behavior vs Player Action, crew reactions (or 4th wall antics)**

(******Link to Real Life posted. **)

**Coat-tailing this fanfic and turning it into a multifill idea?**

**How would a character or squadmate act under certain conditions determined by the player? How would they react?**

**Things like: **  
*** Idling (waiting for player to choose dialogue)**  
*** Getting lost (player map)**  
*** Abrupt conversation (player "investigates" and then ends conversation)**

**Anything else goes**

**Ideas?**  
*** Crew interviews?**  
*** Crew or squadmate dialogue between each other about Shepard**  
*** Any situation requiring player input (or lack thereof)**

**The Fill:**

* * *

It had been more than five minutes, Liara knew.

There was a clock on her omni-tool, and Shepard did not respond to her using it to Liara sitting there afraid at her desk, to any of this. Nothing she said was having any effect on the human, nothing subtle like hinting to the Commander that she must have something more important to do than speak to Liara. Or to just ask the human soldier to leave.

"Shepard?

"Commander Shepard?"

The green eyes perfect blanks, and Liara had to stop herself from assuming that Shepard was eyeing her, was preparing to leave or to say something vital to explain this behavior. Not project some emotion onto that face.

Then Shepard was making an about face, nearly hitting the frame of the doorway as she left and ignoring Liara's frightened gasp.

When she came out of the medbay, Kaidan was standing there. He was a reasonable man, always quick to help Liara find her way around the ship, and also a human that had known the Commander for longer. "Did she keep asking you about your schooling? Over and over again?"

The other had the same conclusion, with Ashley shrugging awkwardly, Garrus and Wrex nodding along with everything the human soldier had to say. There was something in Williams dark eyes that Liara recognized, an unease with whom was controlling this ship, their captain and perhaps the galaxy's best hope of beating Saren. "Just say you're busy with something. Then she'll eventually leave. Eventually."

"Does she keep starting a conversation with you, and then saying goodbye immediately?"

"She does that with you too?"

"You should see what Shepard does to that poor bastard over there. Always asking to see what he has for sale, then walking off."

"Has Shepard had any training with law enforcement?" Garrus asked. "I keep getting this feeling she wants me to confess something."

And it seemed to be working. Maybe it was comforting, to think Commander Shepard was just suspicious of all of them, trying to catch them out in a lie and check for a spy onboard the ship, rather than brain damage perhaps from the prothean technology she'd been exposed to. Or the falls down when she was hurt, to lay there limbs outstretched and the pose so exaggerated until the crew members were able to give her medigel. Or when she drove the Mako and somehow, despite the technology and fail-safes, managed to flip it on its back and force them all to wait until Joker came to pick them up.

Or had the Cipher done this?

Tali was all eager to talk of her own discomfort, and Liara was reminded that she too was unfamiliar with the human race. "She won't stop asking me about the Fleet."

"What do you do?"

"I just repeat myself." Tali's voice dropped. Even behind the smoky mask, you could almost her widened eyes. "Shepard never seems to _notice_."

* * *

On the Citadel, she was a bee to everyone she saw. Going from one person to another, to stare them down, listening in. Sometimes, people would indeed ask for her opinion, but never enough to justify, to be so arrogant as to assume that everyone she passed needed her. Was that what it was, had Shepard been so used to having to listen to others that she simply believed that that no one could help themselves?

In enough time, those that worked where Shepard might tread, spoke only of banalities, hardly moving as the soldier would stand there and look at them. If they said anything at all.

The jogging, only to run hip first into side of buildings, sliding along them, crashing into the safety guards of bridges. All without a pause. At first, dismissed as the Commander needing to find out something vital as soon as she was able. Then she would run to stores. To meet with people she had spoken of so recently, and had nothing more to speak of, wanted nothing more to do with this human female.

When she would find herself following the Commander through another hallway they'd just left, no, they had_ already_ scanned that Keeper, but Shepard never listened to any of their advice as she look again at her map for another ten minutes.

Perhaps it was her status of spectre that kept others from outright closing their doors and from telling Shepard to leave them alone, no, they did not want to discuss their race's culture. That status that kept anyone from every stopping or saying anything to Jane Shepard as she opened every canister, rummaged through everybody she found, emptied all the bank accounts that had the misfortune to cross her path, and to steal an unspeakable amount from the mining companies they passed as she found something valuable that she herself had not even dug up.

After all, Shepard did appear to have to buy her own equipment, so perhaps she was justified with filling the Normandy with ore to sell and her own pockets with credits from mercenaries whose bodies still twitched.

* * *

Shepard came up to her, mouth open to ask about perhaps her mother's death, or the asari reproductive cycle, or to remind Liara that she didn't know who her father was.

"Shepard, not now!"

But even as the mercenaries penetrated the shields, the spectre continued to saddle up next to her, and wait patiently for her questions to be answered.

* * *

When she got the message from Cerberus, Liara had to carefully put down her coffee cup. Then phrase the proper answer, as Miranda all but demanded an answer for Shepard's unusual behavior, as they were unable to find any physical aberrations. A mental problem them, then, but she wasn't entire sure what could have caused this. Things that were at first perhaps friendliness, a test, but was now downright disturbing.

Liara didn't need the details.

'Was she always like this?'

The exact truth escaped her, but she did tell Miranda Lawson to avoid every trying to discuss the topic with Shepard, as none could even begin to ask such questions. There were too many, and all feared what the answer might be.

If she ever did get around to writing a book about this, one day after all was said and done, she would have to omit so much.


End file.
